Creating Windows 7 image to run in VirtualBox

Linux and Unix-Like Fedora
1

Hey guys,

Not sure if this is the best place for this question, but, after using Fedora now for about a year, I'm still getting used to it but I'm using it practically all the time now and instead of having a dual boot with Windows 7, I want to create an image of my Windows 7 installation, format the drive, install a clean version of Fedora 17 and then install VirtualBox and run my Windows installation from there (only need Windows for certain software and don't need a dual boot, only used it a few times in the past year!).

Anyone any ideas or good tutorial for doing so ? I've done a few google searches but there is a lot of conflicting information about how it should be done and although I've asked in other places about this, I've kinda come up empty and then figured this was probably the best place to ask!

Seen some blog posts about using CloneZilla, but other posts about using the 'dd' command from a LiveDVD, but to be honest, I'm not sure of the best way to go . . . . . and none of the articles I found were idiots guides, which I probably need :smiley:

Thanks for any help.

Jim

2

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

3

Thanks for your reply, DukeNuke2.

I've read that before, and found it a good starting point. However, I am still a bit confused!

My hard drive is 500GB, and I only need say around 50GB for the image for Windows. But, if I use the 'dd' command, then am I right in thinking that this will copy the entire drive and not only the partition where Windows is installed ? Is it possible to only image the partition that contains Windows or am I better using a third party utility for this ?

Thanks for any help

Jim

4

The dd utility can either be used to copy an entire disk or any sectors of the disk that you specify. You can easily use it to make a copy of any MBR partition. You need to know the starting sector for your partition and the number of sectors in that partition. Then you use the "skip" option to skip to the start sector of the partition and the "count" option to specify the number of sectors to copy.